Millstone
by kitlark
Summary: Animal testing- animal products. Alone except for them, meaning that none of my human work colleagues were with me. I shut the door and look around. And yes, those pink eyes were staring, some with recognition and some dead-eyed. I patrol the cages, clear out the five dead ones, put them on the trolley, shut the door behind me, and head back up the corridor to the laboratory.


**Millstone**

**Chapter One**

Animal testing- animal products.

Alone except for them, meaning that none of my human work colleagues were with me. I shut the door and look around. And yes, those pink eyes were staring, some with recognition and some dead-eyed. I patrol the cages, clear out the five dead ones, put them on the trolley, shut the door behind me, and head back up the corridor to the laboratory.

Two weeks now and the same story, I try to keep my eyes from the trolley but to no avail. All this just for hand cream-five exploded stomachs.

"Hey Kit. How's it going?" Her voice drifted with the air, ever present, always vibrant, Cindy.

"Five more for the morgue." I reply.

"Fucked-up isn't it? Hey Wilson-take a break. One more to come through." Cindy said as she fed another tray of feeding dishes onto the conveyor belt leading into the dishwasher. She looked at me, smiled, left the machine running and came over to the door. Wilson and Dave worked in that washroom along with Cindy. Two black guys in their mid-thirties and this 18 year old, white blonde kid. She only had been there for a couple of weeks.

"Why do you do it?" She asked me.

I smirked, grinned at her. She was tall, just a few inches shorter than me at six foot. Perfect long legs and hair of a model, and the more we spoke, the more her native intelligence shone through. But there was something of a wild creature in her, a feeling you get on a mountain crest in thick cloud. "It's close to the farm," I said.

"I've been there a couple of times with Lou to see Devon."

"Okay." I said. And let my eyes fall down her body as I knew what Lou and Devon would be about.

"To bad they sold it out from underneath you."

"We have to be out in another month."

"There should be a couple of rooms free at our place." In a take it or leave it tone of voice, she left it at that.

"I'll let you know later on this week."

"You do that." She winked, said a few things to Wilson and placed a tray of dissection dishes on the belt.

I resigned myself once again to the corpses on my trolley and headed to the lab. The smell of formaldehyde wafted down the corridor as I approached. I swung the door open and headed to my workstation. Most of the other fifty technicians were busy at work dissecting one thing or another. This was the small animal wing, which dealt with mice, rats, rabbits. If you showed that you had the right stuff, you got that promotion up to large animals, anything from cats, dogs, monkeys even the occasional sheep or cow. I preferred to stay where I was.

"Hey guys look what we have." I called out to the four other members of my team. They looked up from their work and shook their heads.

"Not again is it Kit? I know that we dosed them correctly the other day." Irene jumped in. She was from Jersey City. Her parents left the Ukraine after the Second World War. First generation to grab that University Degree, good looks and street wise tough, she was.

"Correct?" A dictatorial voice cut through the air. The rest of the team quickly returned to their work. Dan was recently married, Steve had too much of that born again Christian meekness, Irene knew the open roads that her University degree could get for her and her Alfa Romeo , and as for me-I thought about Cindy and that house in Millstone. I turned around, faced the voice and looked her straight in the eye, for she was the same height as me.

"You said it Terry-correct. You heard Irene spot on." No emotion moved behind her eyes as I kept my gaze level with her. I hoped that my eyes were as flat as her eyes. "I'll dissect them for you right now. All of them from group one."

"Do it." Terry commanded for she was Head of The Small Animal Department.

I picked up the first giant white rabbit, especially bred in New Zealand for all this animal testing, five kilos in weight. It was stone cold and stiff. This would be one quick easy dissection.

I plopped it on the tray, picked up my scalpel, hesitated and turned around to face once more Terry who was standing over my back. "The only thing moving in here is going to be that hand cream flowing out of its gut," I said. Her stone eyes did not reflect anything.

The first incision was across the top of the chest, the second across the lower abdomen, and the third straight down the middle to join them up. Like unzipping a coat, I then opened it up. Sure enough the hand cream oozed out of its gut. Its stomach was burst asunder. All of its internal organs were covered in the goop. Most of all, its lungs were normal and intact.

"Is that not clear enough Terry?"

"It's not conclusive," She replied in an authoritarian voice. "Clear up the other four, write it down and then you and the others get back down there and continue with the study."

"Hang on Terry." I stood up from my workstation. "Each day now for two weeks it's the same story, five dead from Group One every morning. Like if that's not conclusive then what is?"

"The study calls for eight weeks and that is what it will be." With that she turned and walked away.

I placed the other four rabbits on my tray and quickly sliced them open. They were mirror images of one another. I wrote up the case study forms and in bold letters inscribed the cause of death-internal bleeding due to a ruptured stomach as a result of forced feeding 50 cc. of hand cream paste into its gut.

"We better get down there. We have just enough time to finish before lunch." Irene said.

Steve and Dan were just finishing preparing the various concentrations of material for the study. The study was for a new hand cream. As with all new products it had to be consumer safe without a doubt beyond any sensible precaution. So there were five groups of rabbits, ten in each group. All groups were forced fed 50 cc of different concentrations of the hand cream. Group 1 the control group had 100% distilled water. Group 2 had 80% water and 20% hand cream. Group 3 had 60% water/40% hand cream. Group 4 had 40% water/60% hand cream. Group 5 had 20% water/80% hand cream.

Dan and Irene wheeled the trolley to the animal room. I lingered behind with Steve. We walked in silence until Steve broke the tension. "You have to be careful."

"Why?"

"She can keep you down here forever."

"Only I can keep myself down here forever."

"What about the meeting with management today?"

I looked at Steve. "The Union would be there. It shall be a secret ballot. Anyway here we are."

Creatures of sentient awareness imprisoned in a room. They know. It must be the trolley. The scent we give off when we enter the room, most of all the scent of that cream. All fifty of them instinctively know, no not by instinct but a conscious decision by the way they cowered in the rear of their cage.

"Who is with whom today?" Dan asked.

"I'll go with Kit." Steve replied.

"Until Group 5." Irene sarcastically spoke.

In silence we worked. One person would take hold of the rabbit by the scruff of the neck and with the other hand hold it erect, hips pinned to the table, legs flat out, spine straight. This enabled the other person to thread the tube of the syringe into the rabbit's esophagus before injecting the goop into its gut.

So it went on until Group 5. Now we needed to work in fours. One person to hold the scruff of the rabbit's neck, and another to pin its hips down, yet one more to hold the tube in place, and the fourth person to use both hands to press the goop down, for it was so thick. Down the tube and through the syringe, down into the rabbit's gut.

At first it would struggle in fear but then would freeze silent, except for its eyes in full moon amazement at why, a clear cry of silent agony, as its stomach was slowly burst asunder. And we took turns at the plunger because there was no way that you could avoid its eyes as you gave it the goop.

Groups 1 through 4 once again in their cage would quickly scamper back to the rear corner, curled up in fear. Not Group 5. They would just collapse there in the front of the cage, flat on their gut and just stare. And we all knew why.

I took a walk down to the large animal enclosure, a barn constructed to hospital sanitary conditions to house the cows and sheep. Alongside it was another sealed building used to store straw and hay. I closed the doors behind me and stretched out across a bale of straw and ate lunch. The sealed skylights at least allowed natural sunlight through, in contrast with the background drone of the sealed ventilation system. There was a whoosh of air. Someone had opened the outer doors. I sat up and faced the inner door.

"Hey man-you found our lunchtime spot." Wilson and Dave closed the door behind them and sat down next to me. "We're behind you today." Wilson said.

"Thanks for the support. You said lunch but you don't have any with you?" I said.

"A soul lunch. We had our physical food outside. Now we have our soul food." Dave joked.

He took a joint out from a pack of cigarettes, lit up, inhaled and passed it to Dave. He did the same and looked over at me. I nodded my head and took it.

"You guy's live in New Brunswick?" I asked.

"Yeah. And you?"

"Across the river. Me and some friends we share a small farm, at least for another month and then-the rent is up-been sold."

"Know so-Cindy's been talking-mentioned a room." Wilson said, as he leaned back and passed the joint to Dave.

"Yeah-she's been talking." Dave said. They both now burst out laughing. Dave carried on talking. "She's cool-real cool-knows about things-a real wild thing." He finished the joint, stubbed it out on the concrete floor, scattered the ashes.

"A good lunch," I said.

"That it is." They said in tandem as we rose and headed back to work.

Back in the lab it was time to wrap up another test study. This one was a 6 month study on rats for a cancer drug. The next two hours until the meeting was to be spent dissecting rats. I lowered a rat into a bell jar, soaked a cotton wad in formaldehyde, dropped it into the bell jar, sealed the lid and watched the rat die. A careful dissection then followed, body parts carefully presented and numbered for the pathology department to microscopically investigate. At least I had quiet until the meeting.

So I thought until the tap on my shoulder. I looked up it was Terry.

"What now?"

"Finish that rat. Mr. Decker would like to see you."

"Okay."

Irene and Steve's eyes were upon me as I left the lab. Decker and for certain his father would be there. The father started the company and now his son was in charge. Both on the verge of becoming millionaires due to the company being bought up by a British Laboratory looking to escape from the animal right activists back in England. I knocked on the door. From behind the door it was the father's voice that said come in.

"Please have a seat."

"Thank-you. Okay then. What?" I stretched my legs forward.

The younger Decker cleared his throat. "We have always prided ourselves on the family atmosphere that exists amongst the staff." He ran a hand across his brow. "Family disagreements always happen but the aim is to forgive and forget. And-." Decker looked at his father.

"And," the older Decker continued, "For a person of your organizational skills, we can use your talents."

"You mean call off the Union vote?" It was my turn to deal the cards.

"Exactly."

I shook my head. "Most of your two hundred family members want the vote."

"They want their jobs." Younger Decker replied.

I looked out the window. It overlooked the rolling farmland that encircled the lab. "It is their ballgame now, your workers, their vote."

Older Decker cut in. "Do you understand what you are passing up?"

"Crystal clear. I'll see you at the meeting."

It was standing room only in the staffroom. Decker and son were sat down at the front behind a table. Younger Decker opened the meeting and then the shit hit the fan. The collective frustration of everyone over pay discrepancies between male and female right up through the ranks, had Decker and Son squirming in their seats. Time came to pass around the ballots. Within ten minutes the ballots were in and counted. The Union was in.

Congratulations and a career with the Union came pouring in the next day. But there was something more urgent to be done. I had one last look at the white rabbits, said hello to Cindy and handed in my notice. Management had no problems about accepting it right then and there with immediate effect. With not another thought I walked through those glass doors and into the sunlight.

**Chapter Two**

The solstice sun hung clear in the sky. Below me, Nora the16 year old daughter of Len and Sarah was rounding up Rosehips and Lilly our two goats for milking. Nora and her parents were visiting us from "The Farm" in Tennessee. They were part of the original group of people who left the city daze of San Francisco behind to create an egalitarian communal society in the rolling mountains of Tennessee in the late sixties. Nora had the self-confidence and maturity of someone way beyond her years, having spent the last 8 years on the "Farm." Our flock of fifty hens and two roosters were picking their way through the grass alongside her.

Cody was sat on the porch when a whirl of dust upon the track announced a visitor. It was Doug a blue-grass musician and gunsmith from another commune further up the river called Lothlorian. He pulled up, got out and started to walk across the grass to Cody.

"Behind you." Both me, and Cody shouted out in tandem, and that was the mistake.

Doug swung his head around at both of us, looking here and there, oblivious of the ground around him. He finally looked down but it was too late. One of the two roosters, the mean one, had dashed through the grass, jumped up, and took a swipe at Doug's exposed lower leg.

"Son of a bitch." Doug shouted as he looked down at the reptilian claw marks and first trickles of blood. Meanwhile the mean rooster had scampered off.

Doug's cursing and shouting had startled the goats, spilling the bucket of milk perched between Nora's legs. I came down from the silo and over to Doug. There was a slam of the screen door, it was Circe bounding across the porch and grass towards us. Cody trailed behind her.

"Look at your leg Doug. Come to the porch. I'll get some disinfectant." Then she looked at me, "Enough is enough with that one. We have to cull half the flock for the move. We might as well begin with him right now. He'll do for soup."

I had been tending those birds for the last couple of years. They had supplied our needs and the local whole food store in New Brunswick. "Give me a hand Cody."

Doug brushed Circe's hand away from his waist. "I'll watch this."

"Oh-. I'll leave you the disinfectant on the porch." Circe walked off with a wave of her hands.

"Well you heard her," Cody said.

"Okay." I said.

I walked over to the hen houses and filled up the feed dishes. They all came running over and buried their heads in the feed. That's when I grabbed him and crossed back to the barn. Nora had managed to round up the goats again and settled back into the milking. Doug and Cody were waiting at the barn.

"Take him." I said to Cody. Doug already had the hatchet in hand.

"Do you want to have the honors?" I asked.

He shrugged his head and passed me the hatchet. Cody already had the rooster held alongside the chopping block. I said a prayer of thanksgiving for the bird and stretched his neck forward, no resistance at all and swung the hatchet.

The very next instant that bird was out of Cody's hands like a race horse out of the chute; up on both feet, spurting blood from its neck, like an oil gusher. He dashed across the grass in a straight line towards the hen houses. The other rooster saw this and came storming back out to confront him. And that headless rooster stayed on his feet, flapping his wings for a good minute or two, with the other on his back fighting away in circles across the lawn, heading straight to Nora and the goats who by now were spooked once again. He finally collapsed about six feet away from Nora who was flat on her back with another bucket of spilled milk.

"I quit." She blurted out laughing.

"Hey Kit. I hope that we put on as good a show tonight as went on here." Doug too could hardly get his words out, caught by laughter.

"We'll save you some soup." Cody called out to Doug, as he walked over to the house with the fallen rooster by his legs.

"Nice show guys." Circe said, watching from the porch.

I helped Nora back up to her feet. "There's always the store back in town."

"Take a walk then?" She asked.

"Why not," I smiled.

"How about that disinfectant?" Doug asked Circe.

"It's here on the porch." Circe pointed at a table.

"Later tonight," I said to Doug as me and Nora headed to town.

The music woke me-up from downstairs. I fumbled around for the alarm clock. It was half-past seven. The sun still hung high in the sky. I placed the half-kilo of grass that was for the party on top of some poetry books and made my way down to the music.

The River Valley Boys were jamming a few tunes just to get the party rolling. Cody was roasting a sheep on a spit in the middle of the lawn. Circe and Nora were laying out a few vegetarian dishes for those so minded, vegetables gathered from our smallholding. The first people started to arrive.

Within an hour about a hundred people were there, taking it slow as the sun sunk into the fields. Then came a roar of six Harleys charging up the track, sat on the back of the lead bike was Cindy. She dismounted, saw me and headed over with a guy who jumped off the back of another bike. He wasn't wearing the Pagan Biker Gang jacket. His grin and lanky gait just did not have that Pagan fight scarred roughness to it. The other five Pagans were huddled about Cody. The Pagans in their own way were in a competition with the Hell's Angels. Some said that they had a chip on their shoulders, always playing second fiddle to their more famous cousins. The Pagans made up for it by living even closer to the edge.

"Hey Kit-good party," Cindy drawled. "You don't mind that I brought along a few friends."

"Our nearest neighbor is half a mile away and anyway we are out of here next week."

"Oh yeah and this is Thad. He lives at the house." She gave Thad a wink.

I offered my hand to him. He shook my hand and slipped something in to it. It was a small black capsule. I looked from my hand then back to his eyes.

He smiled, "It's a Black Beauty, pure prescribed diet pill speed. Cindy has a prescription."

I looked at Cindy. "You have a prescription for diet pills." Near impossible to believe, this perfectly proportioned cover girl who was not an ounce overweight.

"There's a crooked Doctor outside Somerville who buys whatever story I tell him." She said.

Thad gave her a nudge in her ribs and a goofy stoned smile. "And she's not the only one, there's Diane too."

"Diane?"

"She lives at the house." Cindy brushed a fall of hair from her eyes. "Well?"

She was looking down at the pill in my hand. "I'll keep it somewhat straight tonight, just the grass and beer." I handed the Black Beauty back to Thad who instantly downed it.

"Second one of the day," Thad said, as he gathered a mouthful of saliva to wash down the pill.

There was another roar of Bikers coming up the track, five more in all. They dismounted and came up to Cindy. She took out five more pills and administered to each Biker their Holy Communion. And each one was dismissed with a kiss, intimate on the lips.

Thad then turned to me. "Cindy told me about the Union and you leaving. I've given my notice at the Rubber Factory."

Nestled alongside the canal that ran parallel a quarter mile from the river, it had always caught my eye. Built in 1870, it breathed a soul of its own, in fact the entire town did. It was a slice of the USA from the turn of the century. One could feel the image of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn walking its streets but yet, there was a shimmer of a Gothic dream or nightmare filtering through it all.

"What do you do there?" I asked

"I work in the lab there as the second chemist."

"I'll go down there on Monday. Why do you want to leave?"

"Go on the dole. Collect unemployment, other creative things to do." Thad scratched at his moustache, adjusted his ponytail and took a small bottle of Jack Daniels from out of his rear pocket. "Better things to do." He took a long swig and offered me the bottle.

I shook my head and rolled a joint. "I'll just stay with this." I inhaled and passed it to Cindy. I watched her tapering fingers and red painted nails as she held the joint to her mouth and wondered, so this is where I'm going to live.

The three of us finished the joint and they moved off to join the others. The Bikers moving on speed kept it going to around two in the morning, but everything was easy maybe due to the abundance of grass.

I went upstairs alone at first, and just stretched out in bed listening to the sound of the river and watching the moonlight drifting in and out, crossing shadows in the room. The door slid open and she stood at the foot of my bed, a flickering image held in the moonlight as she undressed and slipped alongside me. It was Nora.

Her hands moved up and around me, finding when it was ready, what we both needed. She leant over me and gathered me inside her as I embraced her. Two moving as one, we rolled without loosing contact, then, sleep gathered us together. Until.

The barking of dogs and rush of boots up the stairs awoke us, then the shouting of Devon and Circe from their bedroom. In a flash I was out of bed and had my jeans on. Moonlight still flowed down from the sky, equally balanced by the first light of day.

I rushed out of the room out onto the landing. A group of uniformed police and plainclothes detectives were swarming around downstairs. A handcuffed Devon was being led down the stairs. Circe was also in tears trailing behind him. She was not handcuffed. A detective behind them was carrying a small bag. I knew what it was, Devon's cocaine stash. The taste of profit had caught Devon with its web of desire. Excessive greed had woven its spell. And now the panacea had run dry.

The rest of the house was clean from after the party. Except for the rest of the grass from that initial half-kilo, the remaining few ounces I had placed back in a plastic bag, which was once again sitting in my bookcase atop the poetry books. A detective and a uniformed cop with a dog now came out of Devon's bedroom, across the landing and on over to me. I stood in front of my bedroom door, which was ajar, with just my jeans on over my limp hanging balls and with no shirt on. The detective came up and peered over my shoulder.

"Do you mind if I come in." It was more of a command than a request.

"My girlfriend is not just dressed."

The detective smirked and pushed on by me. Nora was sat up in bed, the blanket just up around her waist, smart move on that girl's part. The detective was much more interested in her upper torso sat up in bed, than roaming his eyes about other parts of the room. The bookcase still stood in shadow.

There was still the uniformed cop and the dog just outside the door. "Do you have a search warrant with my name on it?" I asked as I let out a loud rich fart.

The detective did not smile. I don't know if it was because of my question or the stench that was now filling the room. He took a warrant out from his pocket. "There are two names here."

"Let me see it then." I demanded.

His eyes narrowed as he passed it to me. There was only one name. Devon Griffin. I handed it back to him.

"I did not give you permission and now I'm asking you to leave. You know the law." I looked him straight in the eyes.

The detective motioned to the cop to move off with the dog. "Nice tits she has. I'll see you next time," he said, winking at Nora and pushing by me and on out of the room.

The police cars disappeared into the morning. The other friends in the house I could hear downstairs in the kitchen. I glanced out of the window. The rising sun was kissing the top of the silo, in the midst of the river's early morning mist. I pulled back the blanket and felt the warmth of Nora alongside me. No more shadows in the room, first kiss of the day, last days of the farm.


End file.
